NICK Dawson’s twin brother Simon was murdered during a night out by two teenage thugs – but years later he agreed to meet one of them in prison.
Simon, who’d just turned 30, was out with pals in Bromborough, Merseyside, an area he didn’t know well – and made the fatal mistake of approaching two strangers for directions in the early hours of August 29 1998.
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They led him into a nearby Brotherton Park where they robbed and beat him before throwing him unconscious into a pond, and he drowned.
Craig Roberts, 16, and Carl Harrison, 19, were convicted of murder and jailed for life the following year.
Dad-of-two Nick, now 57, from Weybridge, Surrey, has been trying to come to terms with his twin brother’s murder for 27 years. Having retired early, he has found some comfort in giving talks in prisons.
In 2015, he was able to meet Simon’s killer Roberts at HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes, where they spent four hours chatting – and a couple of years later the killer was released.
Speaking to The Sun, Craig said: “One thing I don’t want people to think is ‘Nick’s forgiven them’.
“I haven’t forgiven the killers, but I have forgiven what’s happened – it’s quite different.
“Forgiveness is not a black and white thing, it’s not binary, it’s a personal journey,” he continued.
He said he’s “not closed the door” to the idea of one day being able to fully forgive Roberts and Harrison, adding: “I’ve not got to that position.
“I didn’t want to have hatred and anger throughout my life. It was a big feature of the trauma I was suffering.”
The meeting itself had been a year in the planning and was part of a restorative justice programme in which victims of crime can have the chance to meet offenders who have impacted their lives.
“My parents never wanted to have contact with them, but were happy for me to do it,” Nick said.
“My older brother is very different, he’s very private and deals with it a different way.
“But being an identical twin, you are like two halves of one. It’s like losing a half of yourself.”
Nick had previously been to parole hearings for both killers and said seeing these two grown men – who had been teenagers when he last saw them – had been “transformative”.
“I used the term rot in hell at the murder trial,” said Nick. “To move from that position, it’s quite a transformation.”
Simon’s family had been able to read a victim impact statement at one of the parole hearings, prior to Nick’s prison meeting with Roberts.
Nick said: “Just seeing them as adults, the emotion on their faces – it helped me move forward on my journey, there was a change.”
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When the meeting finally happened, Nick said: “I wasn’t ready to do any of that shaking hand business.
“It was something I wasn’t ready to give him.”
But he said it was ultimately “incredibly powerful” to be sat face to face with one of his brother’s killers, to learn about the murder and those behind it.
“I did think if it was the right thing to do,” Simon admitted. “There was a lot of back and forth and I did think ‘am I betraying Simon by giving air time to one of his killers and meeting him?’
“I had a close friend who did question me as to why I was doing it – but I felt something inside me which said I need to get answers, I need to have dialogue with this man.
“It is down to being a twin. I needed to go back to the last few moments of Simon’s life and know how they killed him.
“It was important for my understanding, and also knowing Craig in some way and learning about him,” Nick continued.
“That helps you reconcile who they were and how they came to be there that night and the circumstances around it.”
I did think if it was the right thing to do. There was a lot of back and forth and I did think ‘am I betraying Simon by giving air time to one of his killers and meeting him?’
Nick Dawson
He pressed Roberts on the details of the murder and said it was ultimately “very upsetting” to hear, and Nick added: “I did cry.”
He went on to say: “Craig’s a very intelligent lad, he told me about his childhood, which was horrible. He didn’t stand a chance.
“That’s the pattern for a lot of offenders – he was getting into the wrong company, committing petty crime from the age of 11 and a murderer at 16.”
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He said: “It didn’t excuse his behaviour but it helped me to get to understand. He was a violent young man.”
Describing the night Simon died in 1998, Nick went on: “My brother had a billion to one unlucky meeting. These sliding doors moments.
“He didn’t get a taxi that night – he lost contact with his friends in the club, there were no mobile phones in those days.
“He was staying at a friend’s house and he stupidly asked these two for directions – and in their drug and drink-fuelled state they took their anger out on Simon, robbed him and then killed him.”
Roberts’ account of the murder
Nick said Roberts still recalled the majority of the incident and was willing to share his memories.
“He described the parade of shops they were in, they were robbing a car that night,” he explained.
“He told me how they’d seen Simon and he’d asked for directions and they’d decided to rob him, so they told him ‘we’re going that way, we’ll show you’.
“He remembered things quite well, but some of it was a bit sketchy,” continued Nick.
“He didn’t talk specifically where in the park but he said once they were there Simon was getting paranoid.
“I think he knew at that point he’d got himself into a situation that could’ve been dangerous.”
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Nick explained: “My dad described it as they tortured and executed his son. They did, he was terrified and crying and begging them to stop hitting him, but they didn’t and they kept on.”
Nick said Roberts told him they never intended to murder Simon. “I believe him,” said Nick. “They just wanted to rob him, but it transpired that he didn’t have any cash, only a bank card.
“That’s where the attack became more severe because they effectively wanted to get the PIN number.
“I believe Simon would’ve given it to them pretty damn quick, but they were drug-fuelled and drunk and couldn’t remember it, so he had to repeat it so many times.
“At this point they were knocking him unconscious and stamping on him – they had him next to a pond and they would bring him round and splash water on his face.
“Then when they finally remembered the number they lifted him unconscious and threw him in the pond. Simon was never going to survive.”
However, Nick said Roberts and Harrison had bizarrely expected their victim to “wake up, get home and think he’d had a bad night”.
“Maybe they were wanting to wash any evidence off Simon – but I don’t know if at any point one of them said ‘let’s kill him’, I’ve never had that answer. They both got done for murder, regardless,” he added.
Nick said the way Roberts described the thought process of Simon waking up and clambering out of the water “did upset me”.
Referring to his own memories of the night Simon died, Nick said: “I didn’t get that twin sixth sense that anything had happened.”
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Nick described how it was a bank holiday and he had just got married. He and his new wife had travelled from Surrey back to Cumbria where the twins had grown up and their parents still lived.
Nick said Simon had cried on his wedding day. “He was devastated when I got married because he’d never settled down,” he said.
“We had actually planned to meet that weekend. We’d just had our 30th birthday and we were going to meet up on the Sunday or Monday.
“Simon got murdered on the Friday night, early hours of Saturday morning.”
Their dad had called Nick and his older brother to break the news, after police told them what had happened.
“We got to our parents’ house – it was an awful time, shock and disbelief,” said Nick.
He went to see Simon’s body in the mortuary. “I couldn’t believe we’d lost him,” he continued.
“I looked at Simon and I could just see myself. Bless him, he’d been attacked quite badly.
“I said goodbye to my twin and that was very profound. I still don’t fully process the twin loss thing,” Nick added.
He said when new people ask him about his family and siblings, he often pretends Simon didn’t exist.
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“It’s to protect myself,” he said. “It’s a very complex process. I’m almost pretending I’m not a twin.”
Following the murder, Nick agreed to get involved in a reenactment to be shown on Crimewatch in order to coax any witnesses to come forward.
“I told police ‘I’ll do anything to help find the killers’ – we’d had two weeks of knowing nothing except Simon had been badly beaten,” he said.
During the appeal, Nick was wearing his brother’s clothes and walked from the nightclub with one of the girls who Simon had been out with.
“I walked to the park where he’d died,” said Nick. “I look back and think how on earth did I do that?”
However, it did help jog people’s memories and Roberts and Harrison were quickly caught.
Did Roberts apologise?
Asked if Roberts said he was sorry for murdering Simon when he met him in prison, Nick said: “That wasn’t an intent of mine, to hear him say sorry. That wasn’t needed at that point.
“I expected it, but I didn’t have to have it, but he did. It was a milestone moment when he talked about his shame of what he’d done, he was talking about how he thought ‘sorry’ is not the right word to say to me or my family.
“It was such an evil thing I did, I just don’t feel sorry was the right word, it was horrific,” said Nick, recalling Roberts’ words to him.
“Craig was actually really open and honest with me,” he continued. “It just didn’t feel like a man going through the motions of the meeting to look good.
“It was him genuinely wanting to help, and he was at a point in his sentence where he was trying to face up to things.
“I think a lot of offenders, especially when it’s a very serious crime, disassociate themselves and pretend it was a different form of them that had done it.
“Eventually, they get to the point where they really accept the horror of what they’ve done.
“I felt Craig was at that point,” he added.
Nick said he holds “no malice” towards either Roberts or Harrison, who have both now been released from prison – Roberts a couple of years after the meeting and Harrison last month.
“I kind of respect them in a way,” he said. “It sounds really weird, they’ve done their time. I’ve got no nastiness towards them.”
He added: “It’s a journey that never ends. I use the expression ‘finding meaning’ and I’ll spend my life doing that.”
Nick’s book Face to Face: Finding Justice for My Murdered Twin Brother was released in July.
